History repeats itself with the assassination of a Hamas official.
By James M. Dorsey
The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey depends on
the support of its readers. If you believe that the column and podcast add
value to your understanding and that of the broader public, please consider
becoming a paid subscriber by clicking on the subscription button at http://www.jamesmdorsey.substack.com and choosing one of the
subscription options. Thank you.
To watch a video version of
this story on YouTube please click here. An audio podcast is available
on Soundcloud.
History repeats itself.
Palestinian airplane hijackings and
attacks on Israeli civilians in Israel as well as on Israeli and Jewish targets
abroad pockmarked the 1970s and 1980s.
A Swissair plane in September 1970 was hijacked
by the PFLP and brought with two other planes to Dawson’s Field in the
Jordanian desert. (AFP)
The violence put the Palestinian
issue on the world agenda. The violence erupted, and at times, was driven by
fierce debate among Palestinian guerilla leaders on whether to drop maximalist
demands for replacing the State of Israel with a (Palestinian-dominated)
“secular democratic state” and strive for a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
It took the PLO 16 years to
unambiguously accept Israel’s existence and end armed resistance against Israel
in 1988.
The violence ebbed and flowed. It
involved targeted assassinations of Israeli and Palestinian representatives and
leaders in third countries.
The 1982 shooting in London of the Israeli
ambassador to Britain, Shlomo Argov, sparked the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and forced Yasser
Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organisation to decamp from Lebanon to Tunisia.
Crime Scene Attempted
Assassination of Shlomo Argov, the Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom,
Thursday 3rd June 1982. Photo: Bunny Atkins/Mirropix/Getty Images
For much of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s,
Israel refused to engage with the PLO, employing the same language it uses
today about Hamas.
To be sure, Hamas’ October 7 attack
on Israel upped the ante in scale and brutality.
It has, again fitting a historic
pattern, empowered the most extreme ultra-nationalist, ultra-religious elements
on Israel’s political spectrum, and sparked a war, involving indiscriminate
bombing and punishment of a civilian population that Israel and Hamas will find
difficult to live down.
While the jury is out, the war has
not halted a torturous process within Hamas, much like the equally torturous
evolution within the PLO.
Hamas’ internal debate became evident
with the adoption of its 2017 amended charter and has continued despite the
war. There is no guarantee that Hamas will follow in the footsteps of the PLO.
This week’s presumably Israeli
killing in Beirut of senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri, a 57-year-old
co-founder of the group’s military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, and
deputy head of its political bureau, raises the spectre of renewed tit-for-tat
Palestinian and Israeli killings in third countries with one difference.
Hamas deputy political chief Saleh al-Arouri,
after signing a reconciliation deal with senior Fatah official Azzam al-Ahmad,
during a short ceremony at the Egyptian intelligence complex in Cairo, Egypt.
Photo: AP/Nariman El-Mofty
Mr. Al-Arouri, was widely viewed as a
hardliner within Hamas, responsible for the group’s military infrastructure in
Lebanon and operations on the West Bank, where its popularity is on the rise
because of the Gaza war and its contribution to a potentially burgeoning armed
insurgency.
Protests erupted on the West Bank, in response to calls by Hamas for
“acts of resistance,” to protest the killing of Mr. Al-Arouri, a West Bank
native, and several other Hamas operatives in the Beirut drone strike. A general strike closed down businesses.
In August, Mr. Al-Arouri telegraphed
Hamas’s intentions long before the October 7 attack.
“A total war has become inevitable.
We all consider it necessary… The resistance axis, the Palestinian people, and
our nation, we want this total war. It is not (just) something we say
in the media. We talk about it behind closed doors…. We are discussing together
the different scenarios and possibilities,” Mr. Al-Arouri told Al Maydeen TV.
Last century’s tit-for-tat killings
of Palestinians targeted primarily PLO moderates, not hardliners, and were
perpetrated not only by Israel but also by Palestinian hardliners, like Abu
Nidal, a renegade PLO operative.
Israel has repeatedly warned that it
will hunt down Hamas operatives wherever they are.
In 2015, the US State Department
offered up to $5 million for “information leading to the
identification or location” of Mr. Al-Arouri.
Even so, Israel failed
to notify the Biden administration of its plans to take out Mr. Al-Arouri, a sign it feared the
US would oppose the operation because it risked expanding the war beyond
carefully calibrated hostilities on the Lebanese-Israeli border and in the Red
Sea as well as Israeli-Palestinian clashes in the West Bank.
Complicating the fallout of Mr.
Al-Arouri’s death is the fact that Israel and Hamas are not the only players.
Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate for
the killing in Lebanon of any representative of the Iranian-backed Axis of
Resistance that includes Hamas, the Yemeni Houthis, and Iraqi militias
alongside the Lebanese Shiite militia and the Islamic Republic.
Members
of Lebanon’s Hezbollah take part in Ashura commemorations in a southern Beirut
suburb. Anwar Amro/AFP/Getty Images
Hezbollah has been waging a war
against Israel since October 7 to tie Israeli forces down on the Jewish state’s
northern border so that they cannot be deployed in Gaza without provoking an
all-out conflict that could prove disastrous for Hezbollah and Lebanon.
Mr. Arouri’s killing puts Hezbollah
between a rock and a hard place. It needs to find a way to be seen as living up
to its vow while ensuring the hostilities do not spin out of control. Many in
Lebanon fear Hamas could drag the bankrupt country into a war they do not want.
Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu threatened on a visit to troops on the Lebanese border that Israel would
"single-handedly turn Beirut and South Lebanon, not
far from here, into Gaza and Khan Yunis" if Hezbollah started an all-out war.
In a 90-minute speech to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the US assassination of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Qassem Soleimani scheduled before Mr. Al-Arouri’s killing, Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah referred only summarily to the Hamas leader’s death.
Hezbollah
supporters in Beirut raise their fists and cheer, as they listen to a speech by
leader Hassan Nasrallah. Pic: AP
Much of his speech was an ode to Mr.
Soleimani and Iran’s role in supporting militias in Gaza, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon,
and Yemen by funding, training, and arming them, enabling them to manufacture
weaponry, and creating the Axis of Resistance.
Even so, Mr. Nasrallah insisted that Axis
members independently took their own decisions and did not take orders from
Iran.
Clad in a black cloak and turban, Mr.
Nasrallah praised Hamas’ October 7 attack with no mention of the group’s
targeting of civilians. He described the carnage rained on Gaza by Israel in
response as “worth the sacrifice.”
The Hezbollah leader produced a
laundry list of why Hamas was winning the war, including its success in putting
the Palestinian plight back on the international agenda.
The war succeeded in “reviving the
Palestinian cause, forcing nations across the world to look for solutions,” Mr.
Nasrallah said, noting that Arab countries had been willing to establish formal
relations with Israel without a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Yet, the Hezbollah leader seemed to
buy time, by saying he would address the issue of Lebanon and Mr. Al-Arouri’s
killing in greater detail in another speech on Friday during a ceremony for a
Hezbollah operative who died recently.
At the same time, Mr. Nasrallah
appeared to suggest that Hezbollah would retaliate for Mr. Al-Arouri’s killing
on the group’s timeline, considering widespread Lebanese opposition to a war
with Israel.
Mr. Nasrallah warned, referring to
Mr. Al-Arouri’s killing in the Hezbollah stronghold in southern Beirut, that “yesterday’s
crime is blatant, it is serious. This crime will not go unanswered. The
battlefield is there, the nights are there.”
Yet, he also noted that “we are
taking the situation in Lebanon into account.”
Tellingly, Mr. Nasrallah seemed to
back hardliners in Hamas’ internal debate.
Arguing that Jewish attachment to the
land was fabricated and that Israelis were fleeing the country because Israel was
proven incapable of providing security, Mr. Nasrallah addressed Israelis
directly, saying, “Here you don’t have a future. The land of Palestine is for
the Palestinians.”
Dr. James M. Dorsey
is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam
School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast,
The Turbulent World with James M.
Dorsey.
Comments
Post a Comment